The described technology relates generally to accessing data and particularly to accessing data from data sources with diverse formats.
Large organizations may have their digital data stored in various data stores, such as databases and file systems, in diverse and incompatible formats. Different groups within the large organizations may have created their own data stores to meet the needs of the group. Each group would typically select its own type of data storage system and format to meet its particular needs. Traditionally, these data stores were created independently of any other data stores within the organization. As a result, the various data stores of an organization often contained duplicate and inconsistent data.
Recently, these large organizations have adopted standards such as the extensible markup language (“XML”) for representing data in a uniform format. The use of XML by each group within an organization increases the compatibility of the data stores. It is, however, difficult for organizations to provide an XML interface to each of its existing data stores. The organizations would need to expend considerable resources to provide a mapping between their existing data stores or other sources of data and the XML formats.
It would be desirable to have a system that would facilitate the integrating of data stores with incompatible formats.